ARTS WATCH. Rock review.

Mmm Good

Crash Test Dummies Take Low-key Approach

November 30, 1996|By Dennis Polkow. Special to the Tribune.

The big question posed by the Crash Test Dummies' current tour in support of their new album "A Worm's Life" is whether or not the quirky band from the Great White North has life beyond 1994's enormously popular "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" song.

Yes, the capacity crowd that stood shoulder to shoulder at the new House of Blues on Thanksgiving Eve did enthusiastically sing along when that hit was offered midway through the Dummies' 90-minute set, but the group's performance fortunately indicated that it is much more than a one-trick pony.

Remember the Disney cartoon shorts based on A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh"?

Imagine Eeyore the Donkey fronting a rock band, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the basic Crash Test Dummies approach to things. Eeyore, in this case, is singer/songwriter/guitarist Brad Roberts, and like his deep-voiced cartoon counterpart, Roberts makes wry little observations about life around him.

There is no rage, no anger, in fact, little emotion expressed at all. Most of these cynical soliloquies--which tend to arrive at a pop hook or chorus with vocal support from the rest of the band--simply take the slow, monotone tone of, "Well, hey, look at this silly, insignificant thing that you probably never would have thought about."

Nietzsche, it ain't, but part of what makes it work is that the group sound is focused on being a musical mirror of this wacky world viewed through an introspective microscope.

Thus, even Roberts' voice is resonant and deep, one of the few genuine bass-baritone voices in all of rock. In fact, it is an instrument deep enough to be virtually an inversion of the piercing-pop tenor sound that has been so generic to the genre over the years. Roberts may well be the anti-Cetera.

Ken Nordine comes to mind, as does Lou Reed. Both are better wordsmiths, to be sure, but Roberts has a cadence to his voice that lends even his truly mundane material an air of credibility.

Yet along with Roberts' voice, the band is also a curious hybrid of a folk-rock group and a contemporary alternative approach.